Tag: Trump

“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” A.J. Liebling

Today’s headline – “Viral Fake Election News Outperformed Real News on Facebook in Final Months of the U.S. Election” – got me thinking about how we got to this dangerous place.

Many years ago, while in college, I remember a Sociology professor discussing then new statistics that showed, for the first time, more people were getting their news from TV than from newspapers. He made the point that TV news pieces were by definition brief and that the deeper analysis offered by newspapers would fade. He described this as a danger to democracy.

In those days, TV news departments were seen as a public service. As time went by, that value was decayed by networks and stations whose values shifted to profit as their business became more competitive.

“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth.”

1984
George Orwell

Many years ago, in the summer between graduating from St. Raymond’s Elementary School in the Bronx, NY and beginning high school at Fordham Prep I received a reading list that changed my world.

Fordham sent hundreds of book choices to its incoming freshmen…with the instruction to read any 30. That summer, from basketball court to beach, I went everywhere with a book. My view of the world and how it worked expanded beyond the bounds of Parkchester, the housing project where I grew up.

In today’s politics, three of those books stand out: 1984 and Animal Farm, written in 1945 and 1949 by George Orwell and Brave New World written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley. It’s 1984 that I find myself thinking most about today as I try to understand the confusion our recent election and the debasement of our electoral process.

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously and accepting both of them.” Orwell, 1984

Destroying truth in favor of a chosen reality has been going on in our politics, talk radio, talk TV and the internet for many years now. if scientific proof is inconvenient, it can be replaced by voices repeated loudly and often. We have certainly seen that in the fight over protecting our environment. It occurs over and over in policy arguments. And, if a political argument is weak, character assassination is a convenient alternative.

“The party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.” Orwell, 1984

In this environment, Donald Trump was not a surprise. He was a predictable outcome. The failure of the parties to produce – to work in compromise – allowed him to present himself as a strong man solution.

“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”
Orwell, 1984

Early in the campaign, during the primaries, it was observed that Trump used his rallies and interviews to test his insults and lies. If they got a strong response – they were repeated often. For example, his assault on Ted Cruz…

“His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” Trump said Tuesday during a phone interview with Fox News. “What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don’t even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it.”

If they did not catch with his audience, like a mocking of Bernie Sanders for a hernia operation, they were dropped.

Unlike Orwell’s Big Brother, whose lies required a systematic bureaucratic erasing of the truth, Trump ran his campaign as a one man show…say it loud, say it proud, mix it up with contradictions and convince people that only what you say matters…that you are the only solution. It’s the show that brings a new reality.

“Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”
Orwell, 1984

So where does this take us?

There are two paths…

The first is that we will find that lying to 325 million people is different from cutting deals with individuals. The good people who believed in him will remember his words that came before and see them shifting as he takes power. They will reject his opportunism. The other good people who didn’t support him will continue to assert their democratic role. America will revert to the core values that brought it greatness through our imperfect union, an open and free society where people can honestly discuss their disagreements.

The other path is darker. We further cede our freedom to the person who said, “I alone can fix it.”‘

For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?” Orwell, 1984

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About this blog

Before the 2016 Clinton-Trump Presidential election, the most important election in my lifetime was the 2002 Georgia Senatorial election. It set the path for our decaying politics. It assaulted the values that had truly made and kept America great. It set a pattern for today.

In that election, Senator Max Cleland was challenged by Saxby Chambliss. Chambliss was far behind as election day came close. He had nothing to lose and did something that in the past would have been attacked as despicable and, indeed, contrary to American values. He attacked Senator Cleland as weak on defense. The tool he used was a Cleland vote on amending the Chemical Weapons Treaty. That amendment passed 56-44 with Cleland being on the same side as Senator Bill Frist, then head of the Senate committee that picked Chambliss to run against Cleland. Chambliss accused Cleland of “breaking his oath to protect and defend the Constitution”.

Well, we’re used to politicians twisting the truth, so why was this a step toward changing American values?

Max Cleland was a former Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. At the age of 25, while in Viet Nam as a Captain in the U.S. Army, Max Cleland lost both his legs and one arm in service to his nation. To attack such a man as anything other than a patriot would have been unthinkable before that 2002 election.

Chambliss reversed the polls, won the election and changed our politics to this day. Others saw what he had done and learned. The new formula was simple and profoundly cynical: find a strength in your opponent and transform it to a weakness.

The formula has been repeated over and over ever since. Most recently, we have seen it in our 2016 election where a candidate who served (with good popularity) as Senator and Secretary of State has been subjected to years of Congressional hearings, as she emerged as a strong candidate for President.

The evolving result has been a loss of common national values.

The Republican and Democratic tribes do not do the business of the nation. They do not pass budgets. They do not stand unified at the water’s edge against nations that would do us harm. They focus on partisan interest and the destruction of each other.

When they fail, they do not apologize and seriously commit to work to the common good. They say citizens want them to be stronger in pushing their philosophies. They claim mandate, rather than the reality that citizens are limited by the rules they have set to a binary choice.

In truth, their philosophies are meaningless to most Americans. They are too often used to generate anger with ideas as a tagline.

Citizens simply want America to work…to bring us jobs and stability. We want people who will talk to each other, listen and find – or create – common ground. That is leadership in a democracy – if we want to keep it.

This introduction is to a new blog dedicated to values. It is about people who put themselves second to others. It is about a future worth having. It will include stories about heroes I and others have met or observed, a little history and, perhaps, a few thoughts